A production server (e.g. a web server, an application server etc.) may be coupled to a collection of devices (e.g. a storage appliance, a secondary storage device etc.) in a storage network (e.g. a storage area network (SAN), a network designed to attach computer storage devices, a network switch compatible with a Fiber Channel protocol such as a Brocade® (AP7600 class switch and/or a FA4-18 blade that plugs into a switch, etc). The storage network may utilize a hierarchy of protocols (e.g. a Fiber Channel zoning protocol, a LUN masking protocol, a small computer system interface (SCSI) reservation protocol, etc.) to control access to one or more nodes in the storage network.
The Fiber Channel (e.g. gigabit-speed network technology used for storage networking) zoning protocol (e.g., partition a Fiber Channel fabric into smaller subsets to restrict interference, add security, simplify management, etc.) may restrict communication between a group of nodes of a Fiber Channel fabric (e.g. a switched fabric of Fiber Channel devices enabled by a Fiber Channel switch).
The LUN masking protocol may be an authorization process that makes the LUN available to a set of the collection of production servers and/or the collection of devices and unavailable to another set of the collection of production servers and/or the collection of devices. The SCSI reservation may limit access by an initiator for input/output (I/O) operations to a portion of a LUN represented storage volume.
An event may occur that may lead to a loss of the data (e.g. a disaster destroys the appliance upon which the data is stored, a user may accidentally delete a data file, a data file may be corrupted, a computer virus may damage the data, a network failure, etc.) stored in the network. Thus, an enterprise class data protection system (e.g. making copies of data so that these additional copies may be used to restore the original after a data loss event, etc.) may be used to back up the data in a collection of back up storage devices.
The enterprise class data protection system may require that backup servers have access to the protected storage (e.g. the storage used by a collection of production servers) and/or the collection of backup servers in order to request a data read and/or a data write in order to back up the data. However, the hierarchy of protocols may block the access of the backup storage device to the collection of production servers and/or the collection of backup storage devices.
Consequently, the backup storage devices may not be able to read and/or write data from the other devices in the computer network without altering the hierarchy of protocols. Altering the hierarchy of protocols may require the manual reconfiguration of the hierarchy of protocols of the storage network. This process may be time consuming and expensive and thus decrease the value of the enterprise class data protection system.